By Matt Fox
It’s been four days since surgery and my crotch aches like somebody shoved a bocce ball up my ass. I still haven’t taken a shit, so I figure I’m constipated, which means I need to get myself to the bathroom and give it another go. Which won’t be easy in my current state.
Pain knifes through the big incision on my left side as I wriggle into a sitting position. I slide my legs off the couch, brace my left hand on the armrest, slowly push myself to my feet. My chest and stomach convulse in pain, but I fight through it, reel in my catheter bag and totter across the living room and down the hall to the bathroom like an arthritic drunk.
I empty the catheter bag into the toilet. I white knuckle through more pain as I lower my ass onto the seat. I can already tell nothing’s going to happen, but I sit there anyway, mostly because I don’t want to stand back up.
The rattle of the front door.
“Uncle Charlie?”
It’s my niece Becky.
“I’m in the bathroom.”
“I brought you Taco Bell,” Becky says from the living room. Her voice is bashful and hesitant. “You need to eat some real food, not just chips and jerky.”
Becky takes good care of me.
“Thanks,” I say. “I’ll be right out.”
“Do you need any help?”
“Nope. I’m good.”
The truth is I could use the help. I had a prostatectomy two days ago, and I feel like I got run over by a tractor trailer. But Becky’s done enough for me already. And nobody needs to see me like this.
I struggle back to my feet. As I flush, I notice something black floating in the bright yellow water, but it’s gone before I see what it is.
As I stagger back up the hall to the living room, I hear running water and the clatter of plates in the kitchen. “You don’t have to do my dishes,” I say as I lurch toward the couch. Becky has enough to do already. She works overtime at the hospital and keeps up her own house. She lives with her boyfriend, Jason, but he drinks and plays video games all day, so he’s not much help.
Don’t get me started on Jason.
I catch myself on the arm of the couch, almost knock the lamp off the end table.
“Let me help you,” Becky says from the kitchen.
I’m so spent that I just lean against the couch gasping. She comes up behind me and takes ahold of my left arm. Her hands are still warm and wet from the dishwater. “Thanks, Honey,” I say as she helps me turn around. Becky has a round face and big, brown eyes. But one of those eyes is black and swollen.
Jason.
He has a habit of beating her whenever she pays attention to anything that’s not him. Which she did the day before yesterday. Discharge took all day, and Becky waited with me the whole time.
“Becky…”
“I know,” she says as she takes ahold of my wrists. She sounds like she’s the one who did something wrong. “Ready?” she asks, lowers me onto the couch. I’ve always been big, and now I’m big and fat, but Becky makes it look easy. She works at the hospital, so she knows what she’s doing.
“You know you can move in here and stay as long as you want,” I say.
I’ve said that before.
She sits down on the couch next to me. She’s shaking. She tries to talk, but squeezes her eyes shut and lets out a sob. I reach over and take her hand.
“I’m leaving him,” she finally says.
I may be hopelessly constipated, but I just about shit myself with surprise.
“He’s going fishing tomorrow morning,” she says. “I’m packing up as much as I can and coming over here.”
“You’re doing the right thing, honey,” I say, squeeze her hand. I love Becky like my own daughter, and I can’t describe how relieved I am, but I’m a little worried about the timing. Jason’s been afraid of me since I busted his nose last year, but I’m laid up now and he knows it. I don’t want to think about what he’ll do if he catches her.
“Be careful,” I say. “Just take what you need and get out of there. We can go back and get the rest when I’m better.”
Becky tidies the end table, then gives me my painkiller. “Don’t forget to eat,” she says as she sets at the Taco Bell bag on the floor next to the couch.
“You’re doing the right thing,” I tell her.
I worry she won’t go through with it. Becky’s timid as a kitten and does what she’s told. Jason knows that better than anyone.
“I’ll be back tomorrow morning,” she says as she kisses me on the cheek. “After I’m settled, I’ll make you my tuna casserole.”
“I can’t wait,” I say. Becky’s tuna casserole tastes like a refrigerator full of rotting fish, but she’s proud of it, so I always knuckle down and eat as much as I can.
I tell her I love her, close my eyes and wait for the Tramadol to kick in as she hurries out the door.
~
I wake in the night to a crawling pain in my gut and a tickle on my face. I scratch my cheek, turn on the lamp, check my phone for the time.
10:47 PM.
The ache in my crotch has swollen into my stomach, and it itches like a bellyful of worms. I take another pain pill. As I set my water bottle back down, a hairy black caterpillar drops onto my blanket and scurries toward my feet. But it can’t be a caterpillar because it has legs. Lots of them.
Then I see something white and cottony between the cushions. I pry them apart and see a clutch of cocoons the size of kidney beans clinging to the fabric. Dozens more cling to the underside of the windowsill and the folds of the curtains.
Well shit.
I’m not sure what’s happening, but I’m damn sure I don’t want to sleep with these hairy little grubs. It takes even longer than before to get up. As I straighten to a standing position, something riffles against stomach, and two black caterpillars fall from beneath my shirt, land wriggling on the floor at my feet.
That concerns me a little. The last thing I need is bugs crawling over my incisions. I billow my shirt to make sure there aren’t more.
Three more drop onto the carpet.
Five grubs on my belly then. That’s more than a little concerning.
As I reel in my catheter, I kick over the Taco Bell bag. I’m not hungry and I can’t bend over anyway, so I leave it there, cross the room to the mouth of the hallway. My incisions throb so hard that I can barely breathe, so I lean against the wall gasping like a marathoner.
That’s when I see the overturned Taco Bell bag wobbling side to side on the floor. I assume it must be the pain pill screwing with my head, but the bag starts to expand like a stiff balloon. It swells up until the crimp at the top unfolds itself, one crease at a time. I cling to the wall and watch as hundreds of those hairy black grubs flood across the carpet like spilled coffee.
I took Tramadol, not LSD. This is really happening.
I stagger down the hallway to my room, close the door and kick a dirty towel into the crack beneath it. It takes some doing to get into bed, but I manage. By the time I pull the covers over me, I’m shuddering with exhaustion and worry.
~
I wake to a soft ticking. The curtains are sopped with morning light. My alarm clock reads 6:34 AM.
I slept through the night.
I want the pain to be gone, but it’s worse. My chest aches like a horse kicked me in the ribs and my stomach’s rancid and heavy as tar. The last thing I want to do is get up, but my catheter bag looks like an overfull water balloon. I need to empty it. The hose is tangled in the covers, so I reach down, unknot the blankets, throw them off.
And holler like I just stuck my hand in a deep fryer.
The bed swarms with black caterpillar bugs. They’re on the sheets, between the sheet and the comforter, and all over my pajama pants. It’s like I’m waist deep in an ant colony.
“Shit!”
I kick my legs, swipe at my thighs, throw the covers farther to the side. That’s when I see the cocoons clinging to the underside of the sheet. I wriggle to the side of the mattress, dizzy with panic and disgust, swivel sideways until my legs are off the bed, slide off the mattress. Pain rips through my stomach and chest as my ass hits the floor, but my disgust is stronger than the pain. I push myself away from the bed, collapse onto my back. My lungs feel like they’re filled with wet concrete. I lie there for a long time, wheezing and gasping, until I finally feel like I’m not suffocating.
Then I hear the ticking again.
It’s coming from the window.
I push myself up onto my elbows. Dark specks of shadow jitter and seethe behind the curtains. One of the specks arcs through the wedge of light splitting between them and disappears behind me. A second follows it and drops onto the floor next to me.
A beetle.
It’s the size of an almond, with antennae tined like deer antlers. Its black carapace is flecked with indigo and cobalt.
Now I understand what’s going on. The hairy caterpillars are larvae, and they’re making cocoons and turning into beetles. What I don’t understand is how they got here, and how they’re multiplying so fast.
The beetle twitches its antennae and unfurls a set of wax paper wings, leaps off the ground onto my stomach. I curse, swipe it away.
My hand comes away wet.
My shirt and pants are creased with blood.
I lift my shirt carefully. One of the gauze dressings comes with it, glued to the underside with dried blood. The other dressings are tented and torn, and droplets of blood blister up between the staples.
Did I do that getting out of bed?
Whatever happened, I’m pretty sure this means my recovery isn’t going well.
It takes me a long time and a lot of pain to stand. I make it to the bathroom through sheer stubbornness. My catheter is heavy as a bowling ball, so I set it on the toilet seat to empty it. But when I open the drain spigot, the urine just dribbles out. A dark sediment clogs the drain at the bottom, so I turn the bag upside down to clear the valve. As the sediment comes loose, I see what it is.
It’s the hairy larvae. Hundreds of them.
A hollow chill ripples through my chest.
I knead the bag, look for any sign of a puncture or tear, check the hose too, but everything’s intact. How the hell did they get in there?
I feel nauseous as I shake the bag like a tambourine to empty it. My hand trembles as I flush, and my stomach clenches as I watch them swirl and disappear.
Now what?
I need to get out of the house, but I’m not going anywhere by myself. Becky will be here in a few hours. We can go to a motel. Or at least Becky can. I should go back to the hospital. Until then, I need to lie down somewhere that isn’t teeming with beetles. Maybe the spare bedroom.
I stand, gather up my catheter hose. Then I see it. I just gape at it, because my brain isn’t processing what I’m looking at.
The thickest, hairiest larva I’ve seen yet is inside the hose, flexing and pulsing its way down toward the bag.
I don’t realize my legs have given out until my knees slam onto the floor. The heavy sludge in my stomach churns and surges into my throat. I lean over the toilet and puke so hard that I can’t even draw a breath between heaves. The retching finally stops, and I kneel there gasping like a sick drunk.
I finally understand what’s happening to me. The larvae aren’t infesting the couch or the bed. They’re infesting me.
And something else occurs to me. I haven’t eaten, but I puked a stomach full of something. I look into the toilet bowl and instantly wish I hadn’t.
It’s full of squirming larvae, roiling in the water like a simmering stew.
I cry out, start to stand before I realize what I’m doing, and my head goes white with pain. My shoulder hits the floor. I hear a gargled wheezing, realize it’s me.
The whispery thrum of wings in my ear.
The last thing I feel before I black out is the ripple of tiny legs on my cheek.
~
When I finally wake, I’m wet and cold. My left arm is stiff as an iron pipe, and my shoulder aches down to the meat of my bones. I hear the same tick I heard in my bedroom, squint into the glare of the bathroom window. A throbbing cloud of beetles swarms against the glass, thumps softly against the screen.
But I’m more worried about Becky than the beetles. The sun doesn’t get around to this side of the house until midafternoon. She was supposed to be here hours ago. Maybe Jason stayed home and didn’t go fishing. I hope that’s it. He’s beaten her for not returning his texts fast enough. I don’t want to imagine what he’d do if he caught her packing up her stuff.
I left my phone in the living room. I need to get to it and call her.
I roll onto my stomach. As I draw my arms beneath me to push myself up, my hands find a cold puddle on the floor. I assume it’s puke or urine, but as I rise to my knees, I see that I’ve been lying in blood. My stomach and pants are soaked. It looks like somebody shot me in the belly with a twelve gauge.
I pull up my shirt. My incisions are ulcered open, and the edges are chewed away from the staples. They look like bloody fish mouths gaping from my stomach.
This is really bad.
I drag myself into the hallway. Each breath gets tighter and shallower as I crawl forward. Beetles churn against the ceiling like smoke. Halfway up the hall I turn and sit against the wall, try to catch my breath. I feel another tickle on my stomach, lift my shirt. My belly is crawling with beetles. They fly away as I swipe at them, but one circles back and lands next to the waistband of my pants. Before I can brush it away, it scampers headfirst into one of my open incisions.
I almost puke again.
I crawl forward a few feet, collapse into a coughing fit. Each cough tears at the muscles in my throat and chest. It feels like I’m coughing up a tangle of barbed wire.
The rattle of a key in the front door.
Becky?
I try to call out to her, but all I manage is a croak.
"Oh my God! Where did all these bugs come from?" Her voice trembles, and her words tighten onto themselves like something’s pressing on her chest.
I’m covered in beetles. They crawl up my neck, in and out of my hair, down the back of my shirt. They’re behind my ears, in my ears. I hear a sound like crumpling tissue paper. It takes me a minute to figure out it’s the beetles chewing. And it takes me another minute to realize they’re chewing on me.
"Uncle Charlie?"
I try to answer, but I cough instead. This time I hawk up a gob of what feels like gravel. But I know it’s not gravel. I push myself up onto my arms and spit a wad of bloody, wriggling beetles onto the carpet.
"Are you okay?" Becky asks as her voice draws closer.
I’m coughing up beetles. I’m definitely not okay.
I see Becky’s yellow crocks on the carpet at the front of the hallway, look up at her. Her face is a bloated mask of blood and bruises, and her left eye is swollen like a ruptured tomato. She sways unsteadily, cradles her left arm with her right.
“Oh Becky,” I croak.
She starts toward me, but I hold up my hand and shake my head as my chest convulses in another cough. It’s bad enough she’s in the house. She can’t come near me.
“What happened to you?” she sobs.
I could ask her the same question, but I know the answer.
A flash of light in the front window. Then the crackle of tires on gravel. Becky hears it too. She looks down at me, her battered face grey with terror.
We both know who it is.
I can barely breathe, let alone protect her.
The beetles’ chewing drones in my ears like tinnitus. Something writhes against my stomach, and I look down to see beetles swarming out from underneath me.
I should be horrified, but I’m not. Because I just realized something. I can protect Becky.
I point down the hall toward the back door. “Go!” I manage to say. Becky takes a step toward me, but I motion for her to steer clear of me.
“Run!” I say.
Becky shakes her head, her unswollen eye twitching with fear and uncertainty.
The front door booms like a series of shotgun blasts. “Becky! You get the fuck out here right now!”
Becky winces at Jason’s voice, hugs her arms to her chest. He sounds like he wants to kill her. He probably does. But I’m not going to let him.
I spit another wad of beetles onto the floor, struggle to my knees. Then I lean against the wall as I fight my way to my feet. My leg muscles feel like wet cloth, and pain surges through me like an electric shock, but this is Becky’s last chance, and I can’t give up.
I make it to my feet, lean against the wall gasping.
“Go!” I croak.
Becky hesitates, her unswollen eye brimming with tears. Then she nods, limps down the hall toward the back door. Becky does what she’s told. It’s not her best quality, but today it’s going to save her.
The thump of the front door opening.
“Where are you? I swear to God if you don’t show yourself right now, I’ll fucking end you!” Jason bellows. His feet creak against the floor, go silent.
“What the hell?”
He sees the beetles.
I feel like I’m breathing through a cocktail stirrer, and the floor sways beneath me. But I only need to hold on for a few more seconds. I lock my knees, lean against the wall and wait.
“Becky!” Jason shouts. The floor creaks again and then he’s at the end of the hall, close enough that I can smell his sour beer breath. His face is as sharp and pitted as a rusty trowel. When he sees me, his mouth twists into a sneer and he steps forward threateningly.
Good. Keep coming.
Then his face goes pale.
My skin itches with the stipple of thousands of tiny legs. Beetles pour across my face, swarm from beneath my tee shirt and wrap around my neck like a teeming scarf. I lift my bloody shirt, watch them fountain from my incisions.
“What the fuck?” Jason gasps.
He steps backwards, but he’s too close and too late. I push off the wall, stagger forward, wrap him in a bear hug as I fall. He hits the floor hard beneath me. I use the little strength I have left to shift my full weight onto him.
Jason shrieks like a raccoon in a woodchipper as he thrashes beneath me, but I outweigh him by at least a hundred pounds. He’s not going anywhere.
He curses me, curses Becky, begs me to let him go. Jason doesn’t know when to shut his mouth, and he keeps on hollering. I was counting on that.
When the next coughing fit seizures through me, I lock my mouth over Jason’s like I’m kissing him, retch a thick gout of beetles into his mouth. He chokes, tries to pull his face away, but I clench his bottom lip between my teeth as the next cud of beetles makes its way up my throat. I puke it straight down his throat.
Jason tears his face away from me, wheezing and choking, blood welling from his torn lip. His screams sound like weeping as I spit beetles onto his face. Their legs and antennae wriggle, thick with blood. One unfurls its wings and flutters into Jason’s mullet, while another crawls up his nose.
“Let me go!” he chokes.
His face is a crawling mask of wings and chitinous bodies. I watch as beetles swarm into his nostrils and ears. He chokes and spits, but beetles crowd into his mouth faster than he can spit them out.
I lower my head and whisper in his ear.
“You’ll never hurt Becky again.”
And then I can’t breathe. But it doesn’t matter anymore.
The last thing I hear is the hiss of tiny wings and Jason’s helpless whimpers beneath me.
Matt Fox lives in Rochester, New York and is an English Professor at Monroe Community College. He has recently published short fiction in The Horror Zine, House of Long Shadows, and Bluff and Vine. He has an upcoming story in Dark Horses Magazine. Matt has written poetry, essay, and drama through the years, but he writes fiction now. Most of it is horror, and all of it is dark.
